Emergency Ethnography: Anthropology in and of Public Health Crises
| Dates: | 27 June 2019 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Talk |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public, Post 16 |
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| Speaker: | Dr Darryl Stellmach |
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Recent global health and humanitarian crises—the West African Ebola Virus epidemic in particular—have brought new attention to the social life of emergency: how human behaviour influences real-time patterns of disease, conflict and care. This, in turn, brought new
calls (and funding) to deploy anthropologists and other social scientists in emergency settings.
This talk reviews the recent push to integrate the social sciences into humanitarian operations, highlighting some of the agendas and potential pitfalls. It examines the practice of doing anthropology in emergency—asking how one can make rigorous, effective and
ethical social science in active conflict or epidemic settings. The talk will draw on experiences in South Sudan and Syria, with a special focus on the efforts of MSF-UK, who run a dedicated social science unit to support of field operations and research.
Speaker
Dr Darryl Stellmach
Role: Anthropolgy Implementer
Organisation: MSF
Biography: Darryl Stellmach spent ten years as a field worker with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) before earning a masters and doctorate in anthropology from the University of Oxford. His 2016 doctoral thesis was a multi-sited ethnography of humanitarian emergency, following MSF’s response to the South Sudan conflict as it developed in real time. He continues to work at the crossroads of academia and the humanitarian aid. He is currently Anthropology Implementer for the Manson Unit of MSF-UK, overseeing the integration of anthropologists into MSF’s field operations providing anthropological and other qualitative research to support emergency programs and strategic decision-making.
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